2016 Eighth International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation
A study on the impact between car to circular concrete pole
Fang CHEN1, Chaoqun TANG2, Jianwei Zhang3
˄1Changsha Electric Power Technical College, Changsha,410131
2
Bosch Automotive Products (Changsha) Co. Ltd., Changsha, 410100
3
Changsha economic development zone xiangyuan energy supply Co. Ltd., Changsha, 410100)
Email: fmtianxia1@163.com
Abstract—The impacts between car to concrete pole occurred
frequently in traffic accident, those accidents usually result in
severe car damage and widespread power failure. In order to
learn the dynamic response of car to concrete pole impact and
fracture mechanics of concrete pole, a finite element model of
vehicle-pole collision was developed and validated. Then, three
impacts between car and concrete pole under the different
speed was carried out. The results show that the maximum
longitudinal intrusion of the vehicle increased 13.9% as the
speed increasing from 30 to 70km/h, while the proportion of
absorbing energy by car to the total kinetic energy decreased
from 43.6% down to 14.6%. The concrete poles are damaged
in all cases due to the shear force, and the damage degree and
break-point of pole are different at three speeds. This provides
a helpful reference to the design of frontal car body and the
concrete pole strength design in impact loading.
Keywords-concrete pole; pole impact; fracture; finite element
methods; the reliability of power supply
1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, concrete pole is a wild used equipment of
low-voltage transmission and distribution lines of China's
power grid, many concrete poles erected along the road
because of the restriction of terrain. The car to concrete pole
crash happens frequently. According to the statistics, more
than 50 crashes between car to concrete pole occurred in
Harbin in 2005. Those accidents not only result in widespread
power failure caused by the concrete pole damage, but also
result in severe damage to the vehicle and occupants injury. It
is necessary to conduct in-depth study of this type of collision.
The pole impact traffic accidents divides into lateral
impact and frontal pole impact. This paper would focus on
the frontal pole impact. Because of the width of concrete
pole, the frontal impact between the car to concrete pole
belongs to the small overlap crash. There are many
researches has been carried out on frontal pole crash. To
investigate the crashworthiness characteristics in different
overlap frontal impact, Hong [1] observed the car
acceleration, intrusion magnitude and location of passenger
compartment in three type frontal impacts (full width frontal
impact, 40% and pole frontal impact) by crash tests and FE
model. Yang Jikuang [2] and Ahmed Elmarakbi [3] studied
the deformation and injury risk of occupants in the collision
between car and tree or poles through the finite element
method. In those studies, the tree or pole were regarded as a
rigid component [4], it would not reflect the actual collision
to the crashworthiness and occupant safety.
Little research has carried out to learn the concrete pole
2157-1481/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICMTMA.2016.20
damage in impact loading, in the normal condition, the
prosperity of deflection and crack resistance are attended in
concrete pole design [5-9]. In order to explores the failure
mechanics of concrete pole in impact loading, Walte[10,11]
carried out 11 group tests of concrete pole trolley crash test to
research in 1986, the experimental result implied that the shear
fracture is the main form of concrete pole damage in a
collision, and advised that increasing the number of ribs spiral
wall thickness and encryption pole collision zone can
increasing the fracture force of shear.
Based on the detail pole and car FE modelˈ this paper
aims to learn car crashworthiness and fracture mechanical of
concrete pole in the real frontal concrete pole impact. The
dynamic response and fracture were observed in three
different speed pole impacts.
2 THE FE MODEL BUILDING AND VALIDATING
This paper developed a finite element model of a car on
the market by pre-processing code-Hyperworks, it consists of
the body in white, chassis, engine, internal trim, etc. And the
dummies in car crash are replaced by concentrated mass. The
car model contained 1067392 nodes and 1109385 elements.
The detail concrete pole model was built based on the data
of GB 4623-2006[12], according to the standard, the length of
pole is 7 meter, the root diameter is 223mm, tip diameter is
130mm, and wall thickness is 40mm. The diameter of
longitudinal and lateral reinforced steel bar is 6 and 3.4mm.
The strength rating of concrete is not less than C50, the total
mass of concrete pole is 284kg. In the concrete pole model,
the steel bar component and concrete were meshed by using
deformable solid elements, the elements representing the steel
bar were connected to the elements of the concrete by using
the share node method.
In the virtual tests, the accuracy of the FE method will be
greatly influenced by the chosen material constitutive. The
concrete were modeled by using a material model of
MAT_PLASTICITY_COMPRESSION _TENSION in
LS-DYNA code. These concrete material parameters in pole
FE model were derived from the literature [13-14], the density
of concrete is 2400kg / m3, the elastic modulus is 41GPa,
Poisson's ratio is 0.2, the compressive yield stress is 32.8 MPa,
tensile yield stress is 3.5 MPa. The steel bar was treated as an
isotropic elastic-plastic material
(MAT_PLASTIC_KINEMATIC); and the elastic modulus is
202GPa, yield stress is 1100MPa, tensile strength is 1570MPa
[10, 15]. A Flanagan-Belytschko stiffness form was used to
control the hourglass of solid elements, and the model ran
with a minimum time step at 0.7 μs in explicit solver of LS-
DYNA 971. The failure of concrete pole material was based
46
on a plastic strain, and the elements were removed when they
exceeded a prescribed strain value.
The car model was validated by using a 50km/h full
frontal impact test. The comparison of the results between
simulation and test was conducted in terms of car deformation
and acceleration-time history curves of B-pillar in impact.
Fig. 1 Comparison of deformation between crash test and simulation
Fig. 2 Comparison of the vehicle acceleration curve (at B pillar) in
experiment and Simulation
As shown in Figure 1, The car deformation of
simulation is similar as test. In test, the value of whole car
deformation is 512mm in longitude, while it is 508mm in
simulation. The comparison of acceleration-time curve at
the button to B-pillar between test and simulation was
shown in figure 2, it could be observed that the curve shape
and peak value show good correlation consistency. The
agreement of deformation situation and acceleration pulse
replied that the car FE model was assumed as validated and
could be further used for the purpose of current study.
A cantilevered deflection standard was employed to
verify the concrete pole model. According to the GB/T
4623-2006, the test setup is shown in figure 3, the root of
concrete pole was fix on the test table with U-shaped
hardwood supporter in point A and B, and the radial load at
the top of pole was increasing until the pole fracture.
47
Fig. 3 The cantilever deflection diagram of experimental setup (unit: mm)
When the radial load up to the 2.64kN, fracture happens
at point which with the distance of 2025mm to the tip of
concrete pole, the cause of concrete failure is tension stress
is beyond the tension strength stress. when the fracture
happens, the maximum of compression stress is 5.595MPa,
Linear beam theory was used to calculate the maximum
mid-shaft moment (M), which can be determined by
multiplying the peak force of reaction, and the distance fix
point B was 13860Nm, which is 2.52 times to the B-class
standards (5500Nm), bigger than the demand of GB/T
4623-2006 (11000kN). Moreover, the maximum
deformation of concrete pole is 36.5mm, it is less than the
standard of 96.4mm˄L1+L2/70˅. So the concrete pole
strength of the FE model in the cantilevered deflection test
was reasonable.
Fig. 4 The stress contour of cantilever deflection test at failure time (unit:
GPa)
According to the two validations, there are reasonable
agreement between the model and experimental results. The
car and concrete pole FE model were assumed that the
choice of material constitutive is reasonable and the models
have a good simulation accuracy. In general, they could be
further used for the purpose of current study.
3 RESULTS
Based on the validated model, the virtual impact test
between car and concrete pole was developed. The test
setup shown as figure 5, the pole was buried below the
ground 1.2m, and the buried part was fixed. The velocity of
car impact is set at 30, 50 70 km/h respectively, and the
impact area is in the middle of car. The time of simulation
process is 100ms.
 fracture was observed in the point 2050mm away from tip
of pole, and the maximum contact force was 169.9kN
appeared in 25.1ms. In three impacts, failure element did
not occurred in steel bar of pole, which is agreement on the
experiment result in literature[11].

Fig. 5 the simulation setup of car-pole collision 30km/h 50km/h 70km/h

Fig. 6 The dynamic response of collision at different speeds

In three virtual car-concrete pole impact tests, the
fractures are occurred in all simulations. when the car-pole
collision happens, firstly, the bumper and radiator contact to
the pole and absorb the impact energy, as the intrusion
increasing, the engine collision to the pole, and contact
force expand strictly because of its great inertia and rigidity,
and the concrete pole fracture until to push down.
Under the different speed impact, the fracture mode of
concrete pole is not the same. As shown in figure 6, in the
30 and 50km/h speed impact simulations, the failure
occurred in the contact surface of bumper and engine firstly,
as the impact load increasing, the crack of concrete appears
in the non-collision side interface area to ground, then crack
extension to the opposite side made the pole broken down.
The maximum contact forces are 116.5 kN and 144.7 kN
Fig. 7 Pole fractures at different speeds
respectively. In the 70km/h speed impact simulations, when
the engine impact to the pole, the contact area and the
non-collision side interface area to ground are failure at the
same time, as the car keep moving forward, the concrete
pole fall toward car. Due to the bending moment, the third

Tab.1 simulation results of car-pole collision

total energy
Impact velocity car intrusion max impact force failure time
Absorbing Pole fractures distribution
(km/h) (mm) (kN) (ms)
(kJ)

30 475 116.5 52.3 27.9 contact areaˈnon-collision side interface of ground

50 502 144.7 33.6 35.1 contact areaˈnon-collision side interface of ground

contact areaˈnon-collision side interface of ground

70 541 169.9 25.1 54.4
The point 2050mm away from top

48
 Plastic deformation of car body is main part to absorb
impact energy. For instance, in the 70km/h car to pole
impact, the car body absorbed 45.5kJ kinetic energy, and
concrete pole only absorbed 8.9 kJ by fracture. It just
counts at 14.6% and 2.8% in total kinetic energy
respectively. Which is much less than the absorbing
energy in car to rigid pole impact test. In literature [4],
the car absorbing 84.7% of kinetic energy in 56km/h car
to rigid pole test. While the maximum longitudinal
intrusion of the vehicle increased 13.9% as the speed
increasing from 30 to 70km/h. Assumed that the car
absorbing energy in 30km/h impact is equal to the kinetic
energy of car, and then the car velocity is 20.8km/h. In
contrast, there is a speed limited in road, if we do not
want the concrete pole fall down in car impact, we
should reinforce the strength of concrete pole by
increasing size or using more steel bar. Certainly, the
method of reinforce concrete pole to prevent the pull
down will result in the car intrusion in impact, because
litter absorbing energy will expand with the intrusion
increasing. The injury risk of occupant always follows
the large car intrusion.
The collision process of car to concrete pole could be
regard as dynamic three point bending test, the dynamic
loading is from the contact force of car bumper(the high
is 450-560mm) and engine(the high is 645mm), the
lower supporter is the constrained of ground, and the
upper supporter is inertia of pole. the resistant force from
ground is the main reaction force of impact loading, so
the crack of concrete were observed in the non-collision
side interface area to ground in three impacts. Moreover,
as the impact speed increasing, the inertia force expands
linearly, it makes the pole managed in the contact point
and 2050mm away from pole tip. The situation of crack
occurred and extended in simulation is agreed with the
test carried by traffic department of Ontario, Canada.
4 CONCLUSIONS
To learn the dynamic response and fracture
mechanics of concrete pole in car-pole collision, this
paper has established the FE model
of vehicle collision with the poles based on a CAD data
of a domestic car and standard GB/T 4623, and the full
frontal impact and cantilevered deflection test were used
to verify the models.
In three speed impacts, the concrete poles were
damaged and pulled down by shear force. Due to the
fracture of concrete pole, the seriousness of car damage
is less than car to rigid pole and less sensitive to the
impact speed. the maximum longitudinal intrusion of the
vehicle increased 13.9% as the speed increasing from 30
to 70km/h, while the proportion of absorbing energy by
car to the total kinetic energy decreased from 43.6%
down to 14.6%.
According to the research, some measures can be
taken to reduce the damage in car-concrete pole accident.
49
(1) Enhanced the energy absorbing ability of the front
of car, which could reduce the car intrusion in
car-concrete pole impact.
(2) According to the fracture mechanics of concrete
pole, decline the strength in failing area by reduce the
thickness of pole and the density of lateral reinforced
steel bar. Certainly, the widespread power failure caused
by concrete failing should be considered either.
(3) Installed the reflective warning tape in pole was
useful to reduce the car to concrete pole accidents,
moreover, avoided to erect poles in the accident-prone
area, such as intersection, large curvature road.
Due to the contact location and the mass, the
dynamic response and fracture of pole will different in
the impact by other vehicle (such as trucks), which will
be discussed in further studies.
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